Research day highlights latest London health explorations

TianDuo Wang, a PhD student in medical biophysics at Western University, and Lauren Solomon, a post-doctoral associate in pathology and laboratory medicine at Western, were among the presenters at the London Health Research Day at the London Convention Centre Tuesday. More than 400 medical students, graduate students and postdoctoral researchers shared their latest studies at the eighth annual event. (Jennifer Bieman/The London Free Press)

Call it a show-and-tell for London’s medical research community. More than students and scientists gathered at the London Convention Centre Tuesday for the eighth annual London health research day. Free Press reporter Jennifer Bieman brings us the highlights from some of London’s up-and-coming medical research minds.

A closer look at Parkinson’s disease

In an attempt to uncover a distinct marker of Parkinson’s disease in the brain, researchers collected a five millimetre cube of brain tissue from living Parkinson patients undergoing surgery for a deep brain stimulation electrode, a device that can help reduce tremors and other motor symptoms associated with the condition. Brain tissue also was collected from patients without the disease who were undergoing other brain surgeries. Researchers identified 376 genes that were different in the brain cells of patients with Parkinson’s disease. “Not only are the genes different, but the proteins the genes code for are also very different,” said study co-author Simon Benoit, a neuroscience doctoral canidate. “If you can manage to find something in the brain, then validate it in the blood, you’re golden and you actually have a biomarker for Parkinson’s which does not exist yet.” The research team only has analyzed fully the genes in a small number of its samples and is hoping to secure more funding to sequence the rest. Researchers would also like to use machine learning – computer programs that learn, reason and self-correct as they go along – to study the data further.

Jazzercise and cognition

Researchers recruited a group of nine postmenopausal women in London to participate in the small-scale pilot for six months. They wanted to test whether jazzercise, a popular dance-inspired group fitness program, could improve their self-reported cognitive function. Study participants had a cognitive complaint, like forgetting items or fumbling for words, but scored normally on clinical cognition tests. “People that come in with a complaint are more likely to progress to have memory problems,” said study co-author Sarah Best, study co-author and member of the cognitive clinical research group at St. Joseph’s Heath Care London’s Parkwood Institute. “We wanted to offer them an intervention that might actually change the course of cognitive decline to maintain their memory longer.” The women’s memory and self-reported cognitive symptoms did not change during the study though MRI images of the women’s brains showed subtle differences before and after the six months. The team is hoping to secure funding to expand the pilot to include more women.

Asthma and estrogen

Researchers in London are studying the role sex hormones, specifically estrogen, plays in asthma outcomes, hoping the findings could help doctors customize medicine for their patients. “Adult women are more likely to have asthma than men and the biggest determinant of relapse after an attack is if you’re a woman,” said Lauren Solomon, a post-doctoral associate in pathology and laboratory medicine. Researchers studied white blood cells in the lab and found ones that were treated with estrogen were more inflammatory and may be more resistant to medications including steroids, a treatment for asthma. “The standard asthma medication that we’re giving to women might not be sufficient,” Solomon said. The team is embarking on another project to study how the pregnancy hormone progesterone and other factors affect asthma severity.

Prostate cancer protein test

There are several ways to diagnose prostate cancer, but few to determine whether it needs to be immediately treated or can just be actively monitored. Researchers in London are trying to create a test that can tell doctors how aggressive a prostate cancer is by delivering some genetic material to cancer cells that only they can read and translate into proteins, the building blocks of human cells. Researchers then measure the quantity of the cancer-cell-made protein in a urine sample. “We’re introducing a new protein that you’d never find in your body, so when we do find it, we know it’s coming from a cancer cell,” said TianDuo Wang, study co-author and doctoral student in medical biophysics. The goal is to create a test that can be used in clinics, Wang said, but more research and testing is needed first.

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